Kevin Kelly on the Future, Productivity, and the Quality of Life

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2013

⏱️ 59 minutes

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Summary

Kevin Kelly talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about measuring productivity in the internet age and recent claims that the U.S. economy has entered a prolonged period of stagnation. Then the conversation turns to the potential of robots to change the quality of our daily lives.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:06.4	I'm your host Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:11.0	Our website is econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find links
0:16.3	and other information related to today's conversation.
0:19.0	You'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going
0:23.3	back to 2006.
0:25.4	Our email address is mailadycontalk.org.
0:28.0	We'd love to hear from you.
0:29.8	Today is January 4, 2013, and my guest is Kevin Kelly, his latest book and a subject
0:38.1	of an earlier e-con talk episode is What Technology Wants?
0:42.9	Kevin, welcome back to e-con talk.
0:44.7	It's great to be here.
0:45.7	Thanks for having me.
0:47.0	Our topic for today is a pair of recent essays you've written on productivity, technology
0:50.7	in the future, and as always, we'll put links up to those essays and other topics we
0:54.7	discuss at the page for this episode at e-contalk.org.
0:58.6	The first essay is called The Post-Productive Economy, and you're reacting to an essay by
1:03.4	Robert Gordon that's titled Is US Economic Growth Over?
1:10.5	His answer is basically yes.
1:12.1	He argues that the third industrial revolution hasn't had much effect on productivity, or
1:16.9	at least its effects are over.
1:18.3	The first revolution was steam and railroads, the second electricity, indoor plumbing, and
	...

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